Twice Cursed, Once Freed
by CharlotteDaBookworm
Summary: Ichigo knew, objectively, what would happen when he used Mugetsu. Just, nobody had warned him about the agonizing pain that came with losing parts of his soul. Still, if there was one thing that both his lives had taught him is that you just have to keep on walking. ONESHOT


**Summary-**

Ichigo knew, objectively, what would happen when he used Mugetsu. Just, nobody had warned him about the agonizing pain that came with losing parts of his soul. Still, if there was one thing that both his lives had taught him is that you just have to keep on walking.

 **Disclaimer-**

Bleach does not belong to me. Neither does -Man. I only own the plot of my story. Thanks for reading.

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Ichigo knew, objectively, what would happen; he would use Mugetsu to defeat Aizen and then he would lose his spiritual powers. Tensa had explained it best after all - he would lose the ability to see Shinigami and spirits and hollows, he would no longer be involved in the spiritual world, he would be giving _them_ up. Still, because it this was war and he couldn't ( **wouldn't** ) let Aizen harm his sisters, his friends, his nakama, he went through with it anyway.

He would like nothing more than to say that he didn't regret that choice, even as he walked past a shrine to a recently deceased women (she had died in a car accident, a drunk driver had swerved and hit her car) and couldn't see the plus soul that he _knew_ was there, as his friends began to distance themselves from him ("to protect him," they said. "So that he wouldn't be reminded of what he had lost," they said.), as Goat-Face and his sisters began to spend more and more time with the Shinigami leaving him alone in an empty home.

But, nobody had ever told him about the agonizing pain that came with losing his powers, Oyaji hadn't warned him about that constant ache that came from missing his zanpakuto (not one but two pieces of his soul because Maro may not have been part of him for long, at least that he had been aware of, but he missed the homicidal maniac and his swearing and sarcastic comments just as he missed Zangetsu's quiet words of wisdom.), no-one had mentioned the idea that at the end of it he would be completely alone - because _what was the point_? He had given his powers (parts of himself, pieces of his soul) up in order to save these people, the same people who had abandoned him as soon as he had lost those powers (his worthiness. His _usefulness_.), and now he was useless and alone and no longer able to protect and _**broken**_ , oh so broken.

Because nobody comes out of war unscathed. Especially not 16 year olds who are only fighting because they must, to protect their family and friends, because they would die otherwise. Ichigo didn't. He had killed during that war; murdered human shaped hollows who had been just as real ( **as alive** )as the Shinigami, had taken the lives of people who were just fighting for what they believed in, trying to protect those they cared about, battling for a purpose - he had killed Aizen who, for all his insanity and genius and loneliness and hope and ideas for a better future, was just as human and real and **living** as the rest of them. The very thought of the actions that he had taken was enough to make his appetite vanish, his stomach sick and bile to rise up to burn the back of his throat.

Then there was the flinching - he had to constantly remind his body that not every touch was someone attacking him (Goat-face had tried one of his usual wake up calls and had ended up with a hand around his throat ready to strangle-or-snap and neutralise the threat before Ichigo could stop himself). And the nightmares, haunting mixtures of truth and lies (of memory and imagination) that stalked his every sleeping moment and a good amount of his waking ones as well, reminding him of his sins and actions, of the lives he took and the friends he lost. Of how it was _all his fault._

Still, even with all of that he couldn't bring himself to completely regret his choices - as long as those that he cared about were alive and happy then that was all that mattered to him, even if he was the most miserable person on the planet - even if he felt incomplete, even if he had lost part of what made him Ichigo, even if he had failed – Ichigo would not give their happiness up for anything, he would destroy the world for them if he had to.

 _(And, if, just if, in the middle of the night when he woke with a choked off scream and memories dancing in front of his eyelids to an empty house, Aizen's goals (destroy all Shinigami, create a new world, become GOD so that he would never be completely alone again) started to sound like something good and Ichigo started to regret his choices – well, nobody needs to know.)_

Except, then, the nightmares (the **memories** ) came: from a time where he was Red the orphan who lived on the streets of a younger (Alternate. Different. Right.) London, from when he was Allen son of Mana Walker who worked in a circus as a clown, from when he was Allen the apprentice who had doomed his most precious person to perdition ( _"Mana, please, come back to me Mana!" "You did this to me, Allen._ _ **You cursed me**_ _" "Mana! Please, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"_ ). From when he was Allen Walker the exorcist who would do anything to repent for his sins. From when he was Neah the Noah - the man who had destroyed most of his family before he had released who he was and was no longer welcome with the rest, the man who was hunted and betrayed by those he had viewed as friends ( _"Come on Lavi, you have to believe me!" "I am Allen." "I'm not the Fourteenth!"_ ) And who was executed just for what he was ( _"Allen Walker, the Fourteenth Noah also known as the Musician, by order of the Pope you are hereby sentenced to death."_ )

Suddenly, everything was so much harder - Ichigo-who-was-once-Allen had lived two lives were he was little more than a weapon who was cast aside once his use ran out, were he was both a child and a soldier who fought only to protect his friends, were he was persecuted for circumstances out of his control and prejudiced against for parts of him (For Neah had once been as much a part of Allen as Maro had once been of Ichigo, both were the deepest and darkest parts of themselves who helped to balance them out and make them whole, they were family - once upon a time).

However, if there was one thing that Allen-who-was-now-Ichigo was good at - one thing that he knew better than he knew his own soul - it was that you just had to _**keep on walking**_.

So, he moved on. Ichigo-and-Allen accepted and processed his life and situation with the maturity that came from being a 16-going-on-31 year old man (and fuck, he had better make it past puberty this time - once was more than enough, twice was hell and there had better not be a third time) who had fought in two separate wars (both against people who viewed themselves as gods, against both monsters and men, wars that the majority of the world had no idea about) and had lost his naivety (his _weakness_ ) long ago.

His grades rose because Ichigo had always been smart and with the focus that came from the part of him that was Allen (the part of him that knew what it was like to grow up on the streets and knew just how valuable an education was) he threw himself into school with a vigour that few could match - he had lost too much over the years due to not _knowing_ enough and because important information was denied him. Allen-and-Ichigo started to spend more time with the remaining Visored (he knew what it was like, now, to be betrayed and sentenced to death by all that you had ever known and to see those who were once your friends betray you) and Geta-boushi (because Ichigo-was-once-Allen and he had been an apprentice to Cross, motherfucking prat that he was, and he knew how to manipulate people like the back of his hand [hard not to learn on the streets of London when your next meal and a beating depends on it] - Kisuke Urahara was a master manipulator and the part of Ichigo that was still Allen called out for the challenge he would give) and separated himself from the three teens that were his friends because while he still loved and cared about them and he would still give his life for them they just didn't connect anymore, he wasn't the same reckless teenager who pushed his way through a war that he shouldn't have had to fight in and was way over his level, he was much to jaded now-a-days. He just didn't fit with them

And, so, time flowed - the seasons changed and the weeks passed - and when Kisuke (and Ichigo still wasn't quite sure when Urahara-san became Kisuke, the man who was probably his best friend in this life) found a way to restore his powers and he was able to see Zangetsu and Maro-who-now-looked-a-hell-of-a-lot-like-Neah again, maybe he cried (just a bit) but besides that nothing changed. Because, now, Ichigo remembered and he knew, _he knew_ , just what his life could have been like had he kept going like he had. The Shinigami could go fuck themselves, Ichigo-and-Allen was no longer the naïve child he had been and he wouldn't be used and abused by them again, his friends and family came first above all of them (and if that number had decreased to just Kisuke and the other exiles and Shinji and the Visored as well as his human family and friends, well who could really blame him.)

So, just like Mana had once told him, before Allen-who-was-Ichigo had been sucked into a Holy War that had nothing to do with him, Ichigo-who-was-now-Allen would just keep on walking. After all, the future couldn't be so bad, he had been through worse after all.

END

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So, this is my first fanfiction (that I've completed anyway, have about 6 different projects going right now along with a dozen other ideas) that I've actually sat down and finished. It was a random idea that popped into my head, first during my A-level C2 maths exam and later again during one of my free periods so I decided just to get it down on paper before I started dreaming about it. I'm more of a reader and a writer really. I honestly don't believe that it's all that good but I've gotten tired of editing and re-editing it – I don't think I'll ever be completely happy with it. Still, as long as at least one person likes it then it was worth it I suppose.

Anyway, I was originally just going to use Shiro for Ichigo's Hollow but that kept annoying me so I searched around a bit and came up with two names I liked – Kane (Pronounced KA-neh) which originates from the biblical Cain and means golden in Japanese, and Maro (pronounced mah-ro) which derives from the Roman God of War Mars and means bitter or myself in Japanese. I went with Maro because I felt that the meaning of the name fit better.

Thanks for reading, CharlotteDaBookworm


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